Orca calf that was trapped in B.C. lagoon for weeks swims free
An orca whale calf that has been stranded in a B.C. lagoon for weeks after her pregnant mother died swam out on her own early Friday morning.
A racist ideology seeping from the internet's fringes into the mainstream is being investigated as a motivating factor in the supermarket shooting that killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York. Most of the victims were Black.
Ideas from the "great replacement theory" filled a racist screed supposedly posted online by the white 18-year-old accused of targeting Black people in Saturday's rampage. Authorities were still working to confirm its authenticity.
Certainly, there was no mistaking the racist intent of the shooter.
Simply put, the conspiracy theory says there's a plot to diminish the influence of white people.
Believers say this goal is being achieved both through the immigration of nonwhite people into societies that have largely been dominated by white people, as well as through simple demographics, with white people having lower birth rates than other populations.
The conspiracy theory's more racist adherents believe Jews are behind the so-called replacement plan: White nationalists marching at a Charlottesville, Virginia, rally that turned deadly in 2017 chanted "You will not replace us!" and "Jews will not replace us!"
A more mainstream view in the U.S. baselessly suggests Democrats are encouraging immigration from Latin America so more like-minded potential voters replace "traditional" Americans, says Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism.
How long has racism existed? Broadly speaking, the roots of this "theory" are that deep. In the U.S., you can point to efforts to intimidate and discourage Black people from voting -- or, in antagonists' view, "replacing" white voters at the polls -- that date to the Reconstruction era, after the 15th Amendment made clear suffrage couldn't be restricted on account of race.
In the modern era, most experts point to two influential books. "The Turner Diaries," a 1978 novel written by William Luther Pierce under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald, is about a violent revolution in the United States with a race war that leads to the extermination of nonwhites.
The FBI called it a "bible of the racist right," says Kurt Braddock, an American University professor and researcher at the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab.
Renaud Camus, a French writer, published a 2011 book claiming that Europe was being invaded by Black and brown immigrants from Africa. He called the book "Le Grand Remplacement," and a conspiracy's name was born.
To some of the more extreme believers, certain white supremacist mass killers -- at a Norway summer camp in 2011, two Christchurch, New Zealand, mosques in 2019, a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2017 -- are considered saints, Pitcavage says.
Those "accelerationist white supremacists" believe small societal changes won't achieve much, so the only option is tearing down society, he says.
The Buffalo shooter's purported written diatribe and some of the methods indicate he closely studied the Christchurch shooter -- particularly the effort to livestream his rampage. According to apparent screenshots from the Buffalo broadcast, the shooter inscribed the number 14 on his gun, which Pitcavage says is shorthand for a 14-word white supremacist slogan.
A written declaration by the Christchurch shooter was widely spread online. If the message attributed to the Buffalo shooter proves authentic, it's designed to also spread his philosophy and methods to a large audience.
While more virulent forms of racism are widely abhorred, experts are concerned about extreme views nonetheless becoming mainstream.
In a poll released last week, The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 1 in 3 Americans believe an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gain.
On a regular basis, many adherents to the more extreme versions of the "great replacement" theory converse through encrypted apps online. They tend to be careful. They know they're being watched.
"They are very clever," Braddock says. "They don't make overt calls to arms."
In particular, Tucker Carlson, Fox News' most popular personality, has pushed false views that are more easily embraced by some white people who are concerned about a loss of their political and social power.
"I know that the left and all the gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term 'replacement,' if you suggest the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World," he said on his show last year. "But they become hysterical because that's what's happening, actually, let's just say it. That's true."
A study of five years' worth of Carlson's show by The New York Times found 400 instances where he talked about Democratic politicians and others seeking to force demographic change through immigration.
Fox News defended the host, pointing to repeated statements that Carlson has made denouncing political violence of all kinds.
The attention paid by many Republican politicians to what they see as a leaky southern border along the United States has been interpreted, at least by some, as a nod to the concern of white people who worry about being "replaced."
House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik's campaign committee was criticized last year for an advertisement that said "radical Democrats" were planning a "permanent election insurrection" by granting amnesty to undocumented immigrants who would create a permanent liberal majority in Washington. Stefanik represents a New York district.
Pitcavage says he's concerned about the message Carlson and supporters are sending: "It actually introduces the 'great replacement theory' to a conservative audience in an easier-to-swallow pill."
------
This story has been corrected to report that Camus' book was published in 2011, not 2012.
An orca whale calf that has been stranded in a B.C. lagoon for weeks after her pregnant mother died swam out on her own early Friday morning.
King Charles III’s doctors are 'sufficiently pleased' with his cancer treatment and he is expected to return to public-facing duties, Buckingham Palace announced on Friday.
After the Assembly of First Nations' national chief complained to Air Canada about how staffers treated her and her ceremonial headdress on a flight this week, she says the airline responded by offering a 15 per cent discount on her next flight.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
The current overall public health risk posed by the H5N1 bird flu virus is low, the World Health Organization said on Friday, but urged countries to stay alert for cases of animal-to-human transmission.
Philadelphia 76ers All-Star centre Joel Embiid has been diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, a form of facial paralysis he says has affected him since before the play-in tournament.
An idyllic 453-acre private island is up for sale off the west coast of Scotland and it comes with sandy beaches, puffins galore, seven houses, a pub, a helipad and a flock of black-faced sheep.
An investigation is underway after a Regina police officer was accidentally shot by a fellow officer’s gun during the search of a house early Friday morning.
A pair of Montreal designers' work has now been viewed over 41 million times. Taylor Swift dons a Victorian throwback black gown in her latest music video, 'Fortnight', designed by UNTTLD due Simon Belanger and Jose Manuel Saint-Jacques.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.